I've been playing since a few days after Vanilla launch, and I can confidently say this:

The only time the greater populace of WoW doesn't act like complete assholes is when things are new and undiscovered. The early game of WoW and the beginning of each expansion are the only times this really happens, and it's because everybody is on roughly even ground.

No other time is an exception. Servers may be slightly different in asshole volume ratios, but overall, it's the same.

Logically, people measure their value over others as a matter of their competence or amount of time spent playing the current content or the implied power of their gear equipped. By-and-large, they treat others based on these factors. It happened in Vanilla, it happened in BC, it happened in Wrath, it happened in Cataclysm, and it's happening now.

The best thing that can be done is try to reverse this by being decent to people. The problem isn't the game, some feature of the game, a period of time in the game or anything like that; it's cultural, and one we, as players, must fix.

I'm totally agreeing with you now!
Id you look at it from an anthopological point of view, this is what we must do. It's in essence a world, much like the real world. And as such, we got the same people that don't care about other peeps. BUT... in here we got a few things we CAN do about it.

So I say all the people that are annoyed by this, to join forces and be righteous and treat others as you would like to be treaten!

Blizzard put in all these features that were supposed to make things more conveinent but all they ended up doing was destroying any sense of community and all responsibility and consequence.

One thing always gets overlooked in these discussions. "The community" is always treated as this universally good and positive thing. It's always the individual who's "being a dick" and is in turn expelled from "the community", who refuses to interact with him. But who said that the community is good by default? Who says I should have to adhere to some subjective perceptions of how one should be, in order to be worthy of "the community" and the game itself?

Especially the tight-knit raider bunch is a very smug, ignorant and judgemental stratum of the realm player base that used to be delusional to think that they "make" the community. Now if that's "the community" - why would I want to be a part of that, or get along with that, or be approved by that?

In WoW, everyone can find and mark out his own community. And that's a good thing. The profanation of content helped with that. It was far worse when you had to "know people" to get to do certain stuff, and where people could judge you by retarded standards and this in turn meant that you were being locked out of content.

Originally Posted by Rassium

I like General Off-Topic. It's really cool to see people with My Little Pony avatars advocating for genocide.

If I might toss my 2 cents into this. I raided all the way (current content wise) from MC to BWD. After which point I curtailed my time in WoW (only just recently called it quits). The community from the start was actually fairly kind. But there are logical reasons for why the community has become what it is.

1. Vanilla was a time when few people understood what was going on. Those who knew min/max effects generally crunched the numbers themselves and passed it onwards. Improving your game almost always resulted in you tracking "so and so" down for tips. Raids were also at a 40 cap making dps a non-issue most of the time. Larger issues were pots/flasks/bandages/strats. The only time this changed was Naxx (I still feel that the lv60 rendition was one of the hardest tuned raids they ever made). Raids, being 40 man, also had a unique effect. Generally assumed "effective" raiding was doing in guild or concert with 2 guilds supplying members. PUGs were usually bad, but those that were good happened to have primarily set rosters. This severally cut the raiding population down. ZG was used to farm mats/epic in a lot of guilds, but the same pseudo scenario applies. High end raiding guilds at this time implemented 'try or toss' raids to test ppl out. This consisted of them dying to fire or not.

2. TBC saw an expansion of the world, but also witnessed a televised release including a symphony (important as dumb as it sounds). People also started to know what wow was. This was also the first time that 2 classes were shared across faction (shaman/pally) and real online attempts at improved information sources. Additionally, you saw the introduction of 25 and 10 man raids. This caused guilds to down size ultimately, thus creating more guilds. More guilds meant more players in raid (40 guild splits, creates 2 20 sets, adding 10 roster spots averaged). Multiple that out and you have more people raiding. The difficulty of raids (or lack of knowledge of what was going on) remained fairly static. More players in guilds raiding inflates more egos. WoW pop starts to surge. Wash rinse repeat.

3. What many people refer to as lolWrath. Aside from the hm Lk fight, this expansion is very dumbed down. Thats important. Population from the tail end of TBC caps about midway Wrath, creating many players tossed into a dungeon finder system. These players have no need to interact with people while gearing. There are also now improved sites imparting min/max data. Raid gear still requires server communication. People now find 3 types of guilds. New and open to all, old guilds that dont really need people but find them personally if they do, and the new monster of WoW the jetset guild. Jetset guilds used mass data from the net to find the "perfect output" people should be making. If you do not have those numbers, you were not good enough. These guilds pushed it to such extent that everyone became number paranoid and in turn desensitized to everything else (loot = #s). You also see raider turn over fairly often in the 3rd generation guilds to this day. Also, the prevalence of epics to the extreme in Wrath enshrined a concept that epics and gearscore ensure good output.

4. Cataclysm was just an extension of the scenario that was WotLK but with added LFR. LFR would be the first time people would start to notice the overall effect these things had on all the servers. Still more of the same numbers = loot mentality.

5. MoP is more of the same.

So the game has actively managed to add more gamers to the player base at all levels. What this did was cause a chain effect per described above. CRZ and server transfers have not caused a damn thing. They just make you look at a macro system. When you have enough people leave a server you are forced to realize this system is prevalent. When you have too many people on a server, you run into the 3rd generation guild problem in the macro.

IMO the community started to fall apart in TBC around BT time. It just became more visible after that. Generally, the best overall communities at the moment are on medium population pve servers.

And before people mention anything about the 3rd generation guild commentary, the cause for a lot of turnover is that they expect to get content consumed explicitly fast. In practice, they say "we will raid 4 times a week and everyone will be amazing. final. end of sentence." When in truth the best results come from players that instead dont die, wipe constantly over and over (top guilds die a lot learning ) on a fight learning how to stay alive even longer and then maxing out dps/healing when they understand the mechanics at large. IE, jetset vs sane functional. Combine this with communication of world firsts (vanilla/tbc lacked this overall) and you have a disaster in the making.

Oh god that's the worst idea I've ever heard of. I'd have moved to another server every time someone started "stalking" me.

Nothing to be afraid of, if you are polite with everyone. Community would be much better, no anonymous trolls etc.
How do you get rid of stalkers IRL? Do you change your name and move to other country? Srsly...

Nothing to be afraid of, if you are polite with everyone. Community would be much better, no anonymous trolls etc.
How do you get rid of stalkers IRL? Do you change your name and move to other country? Srsly...

No, they reserved everything and leaders passed loot to their friends.

Bullshit.
You knew 5 people because they were either awesome or the biggest trolls and the other 5000 on the server were complete strangers.
Disagree? Than I want you to name at least 250 people from your server and describe them!

Yes, they did.. Even more than nowadays.
Low damage? Kicked, didn't even give you enough time to explain you were CC'ing and kiting 90% of the time.
AFK in Battlegrounds? Tons of reports and insults.
Not full T6? You're not invited to Karazhan by the raidleader in his full-greenies.

Your rant is inaccurate, false and annoying.

Ah, someone that he's directly mentioning comes out of the ashes and begins anew. The game was -not- like it was today, community wise, at launch. I've played WoW since vanilla's beta and there has been a steady de-evolution. Which is vaguely familiar with this CAD comic about LoL

Things were not always like that. BGs opened up a Pandora's Box.. and when Cross-Realm BGs joined the fray.. we all knew where it was headed.

8 years of WOW here and I would say the community isn't as bad as people make it seem. It's worse in that the social aspects are much "colder" and people are less prone to forming friendships and playing with each other for months or years on end than they used to be, but the community has not gotten to be more aggressive or "dickish" than it used to be.

But something I'd say which creates the illusion that it is worse is that the people who are jerks are a special kind of jerk which is actually worse in a way than they used to be. You get a lot more people who treat everyone else like pieces of meat that are there for their own use, where as jerks just use to be people who would steal or be bullies. You also get more people now defending antisocial behavior and bullying as if the problem isn't a problem. But there have been an increase in people who will stand up to these people as well as the years have passed.

But PUGs were always a word that spawned groans from people and there have always been assholes and bullies. I think the community, while being colder and more distant now without server communities, actually has more random people who are randomly pleasant and nice. They just don't become lasting friendships or acquaintances anymore like they used to.

The general forum used to be a forum that moved to a new page from traffic in minutes, almost 24/7, and as bad as it looks now, it was a lot worse. It used to be something roughly like 99% bad attitudes and people who mocked and bullied anyone who disagreed with them. Now it's more like 60% bad and you find a lot more people willing to defend others and stand up to people who are being bullies it's seems like to me.

As an example, it used to be you'd see a thread with dozens and dozens of people mocking RP servers and role players with only 1 or 2 people standing up for others and trying to explain the reality of the situation. Now you see more people defending stuff like that while there are only a few assholes mocking and belittling RPers or around the same amount of people mocking as there are defending. It used to be you'd see dozens of threads mocking Night Elf players as girly, now you see more people lamenting on the loss of Night Elves' aggression and savagery than you do people making night elves out to be feminine men (though blood elves helped to take some of the weight there :P)

These have been anecdotal observations brought to you by me.

---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 09:22 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Bayhas

Things were not always like that. BGs opened up a Pandora's Box.. and when Cross-Realm BGs joined the fray.. we all knew where it was headed.

Not in my experience at all. Battlegrounds were always a cesspit where one or two jerks would try to tell everyone else what to do and then explode and gripe the whole team out for not listening to them, or they would tell others how dumb they were, in various phrases and colorful metaphors and memes.

The community used to be better with servers in general for making friends and developing a warm social environment, but BGs were where people got really mean, battlegroups or not.

Not in my experience at all. Battlegrounds were always a cesspit where one or two jerks would try to tell everyone else what to do and then explode and gripe the whole team out for not listening to them, or they would tell others how dumb they were, in various phrases and colorful metaphors and memes.

"Why didn't you call that inc while I was off trying to Rambo Stables instead of defending? You all suck. Let's just quit, the score is 200-199. We lose. GG, gay homos." -- Overheard at least once per BG

its too easy to disappear after being a dick, what we need is some way to hold people accountable, perhaps if the persons battle tag appeared by their name then they couldnt just switch to an alt or whatever.one thing we know from the internet is that anonymity can turn even good people into complete jackasses, in vanilla you had to group with people on your server, people you would more than likely run into them again, so you wouldnt be a jerk.

If it takes something so simple as people not knowing your name to be a complete and sadistic asshole, then that person is not a good person, no matter how you spew it.

none of you know my name, I dont go out on a limb and try to take advantage of you at every turn, I don't act like a douchebag to other people in games simply because I'm just some faceless player to the rest of the community. Good people are people who don't do shitty acts of selfishness and act like serial killers just because no one in the vicinity knows them, good people act like good people regardless of the setting they are in, anonymity or not.

I will have to agree with the OP on this matter, the community is almost directly what pushed me away from WoW at this point, I've really wanted to come and try out MoP to see all the hype, but the one thing that irritates me more than anything is the community, depraved, selfish assholes who would sooner stab you in the back if it meant they could loot trash off of you than comrades in arms playing a game we both enjoy.

WoW is alive and well, but only because there is enough warm bodies to keep it looking that way. Whatever community that made WoW what it was back in Vanilla and TBC is long gone.

I don't need to go through all 5 pages to know that LFD/LFR came into discussion. And I'll always disagree with the point. LFD/LFR might have had a role in hurting the community, but this point is extremely exaggerated. LFD and LFR were quality of life, necessary changes that did not ultimately cause the downfall of the community. The gaming community as a whole is going down the toilet, and I don't think anyone will know the real cause. Everyone whines, everyone feels entitled, no one is pleased. Just look at Bioware, poor Bioware. They create arguably one of the best video game series in recent years but by the time the third game is out there is nothing but hate online. Even DA2, a good game by normal standards, is slandered as one of the worst games ever made. It's just ridiculous.

What happened to gamers? There was never such a level of hatred and stupidity back in NES, SNES, 64/PS1, even PS2 days that I can recall. My theory is social media tainting the entire world. Everyone can hide behind their computer screens nowadays, can create alter personalities, and can just do shit they would never do face to face. I really hate the way people have turned out this generation. /rant

Last edited by -aiko-; 2012-12-31 at 05:33 PM.
Reason: sperring is hardd

Nothing to be afraid of, if you are polite with everyone. Community would be much better, no anonymous trolls etc.
How do you get rid of stalkers IRL? Do you change your name and move to other country? Srsly...

This is the same logic as exposing your personal data because "you have nothing to hide". It doesn't work that way.

I don't remember TBC in 2006. I remember it in 2007, as that's when it released.

Other than that, yeah. The community was a tad bit better before the whole LFD/LFR stuff that happened in late 2009/2011. But really, the community has been pretty shitty the whole time.

And Aikoyamamato: What happened to gamers? Xbox and WoW bringing it into the mainstream is what happened. Yes, it sounds super hipster, but it's true. When something ends up breaking through to the mainstream, all the douchenozzles and asshats flood in. Xbox was the worst thing to happen to consoles, and WoW was the worst thing to happen to MMORPGs, in a way. And that "in a way" is it breaking into the mainstream.

I blame server changes and cross realm dungeons. They were a good concept yes, but those things are what ruined this games "feel"
The game is fine, the community is not.

So, you blame a feature of the game but in the next sentence you say the game is fine? Of course, the community was better when realm reputation mattered. LFG tools destroyed that. You say nothing new.
Don't paint such a pretty picture of TBC and Vanilla though. Elitist jerks existed back then too and were just as entitled as now and looked down on "noobs", just the same. Back then though, it was partialy justified, since raiders were the elite few, in the game.
Every WoW player considers the time when they started playing to be the golden age of WoW. Take that into consideration when you are nostalgic again

Not like we think they do. People play the game as individuals surrounded by other people, not as a group of people made up of individuals.

The individualists are made up of primarily 2 kinds of people. People that want to be left alone and people that are immature dickbags. People might flow back and forth between these two, but the categories remain constant. In vanilla and TBC I felt like I was a part of something. I had an identity with others, cared about others, helped others.

For the thousands of reasons we can explain it, no one really cares about that anymore. I don't mind it either. I want to keep to myself.